Failure to do proper training evaluation planning causes poor efforts that usually include rework, the project being over budget, and delays.  The Plan phase is the starting point of the training evaluation.  Planning an evaluation is specifying what and how you’re going to evaluate by reviewing the BOC-1 program, developing the project’s mission, creating the evaluation objectives & deliverables, developing the questions the evaluation will answer, recording assumptions, documenting boundaries, identifying stakeholders, developing the strategy, estimated costs & timelines, and performing risk assessment.  From this a detailed evaluation project plan with milestones is created.

I begin all my evaluations with with a detailed plan in which I include a steering committee to build it.  The steps I use with the steering committee are:

1. Determine the evaluation methodology
2. Understand the course being evaluated
3. Mission of the evaluation
4. Objectives & deliverables
5. Questions the evaluation will answer
6. Assumptions
7. Boundaries
8. Stakeholders
9. On-the-job behaviors
10. Beliefs
11. Strategies (data collection, data analysis, reporting)
12. Timeline (project plan & key milestones)

Over the next few weeks I will post how to do each step.  I hope you find them useful and encourage you to give me your thoughts.